I am pretty sure everyone gets sick at least once in December. It has nothing to do with Christmas, but since it messed with my getting-ready plans, it gets to be on the blog.
Even Almost Martha gets sick in December, but she does it beautifully, and would never do anything like let all the phones die and not have enough energy to put them on chargers and lay in a chair all night and have her kids make dinner and put themselves to bed while she discovers that crying and staring out a cold window don't go well with whatever is already wrong with her head. Never. Almost Martha doesn't even have to go to the doctor, because she waits until the kids get it and just finds out what they have.
Turns out it's strep, which is pretty much awesome in the treatability department, but not so awesome in the do anything besides cry department.
Warrick is the one I finally took to the doctor, and mostly because I knew he was faking but the school was going to keep sending him home every time he complained unless I had proof that it wasn't real. He didn't have a fever and his only symptom was a sore throat that was mysteriously absent except for the first hour of the morning when I was getting everyone ready for school. Even the doctor thought he was faking and told me she would do the test just to be sure, but that since there wasn't a fever and he really didn't seem sick, it was probably just a little virus. When the test came back positive for strep, the doctor was surprised, but not so much as Warrick, who said "I thought I was faking!"
Turns out his coach had told him about what happens when you have to have your tonsils removed, and Warrick was hoping that if he played up his sore throat, he would be on his way to a week of ice cream in bed with no school. Alas, no such luck...just the icky pink antibiotic and he'll be back at school on Monday.
On a slightly different note, avoid the pharmacy in December. Or maybe all year. But definitely in December. Everyone in the world was there today. Hi, guys! I got the timid tech. Warrick's prescription was done, but mine was not, so she rang his up and then went to get a little measuring spoon for it. Twenty minutes later, I was yelling at my kids to quit touching everything and practically making them drink the Germ-X on the counter (hey, maybe it would help them sleep...don't judge me), and trying to make eye contact with her to tell her to just forget the spoon. But she wouldn't look at me, and I think the problem was that they ran out of spoons, so she had to go mold me up a new one and that can take a little time waiting for the plastic to cool and everything.
By the time she got me a spoon, my own prescription was ready, so she just had to grab it from the pharmacist and I could be on my way. Only the pharmacist was involved in a very deep conversation about what happened to the shipment of oxycodone they were supposed to receive that day. (I wanted to venture a guess, but I was still aiming for getting out of there in under an hour.) My timid tech stood right in front of him just waiting for him to look up and ask what she wanted. Only he never did. Every once in awhile, she got up the nerve to stand on her toes a little, but then she would chicken out and just stand there normally again. She finally got his attention and asked for my meds after about ten minutes, but then he picked them up and started talking again, forgetting to hand them over to her. This led to some more toe-standing/regular standing from the tech, until he eventually noticed her and handed over the meds.
I didn't complain because I have learned to never complain until after the last kid is sick...much like flipping off the guy who cut your power...there are certain people that come into our lives whom we would like to screw with, until we realize that they are really the kings, and we just have to live with it. The people with the antibiotics and the electricity are two of them. Also the dude in charge of Interwebz, the person who controls fuel costs, and the person serving your food in a restaurant...trust me, don't screw with these people.
So in summary:
1. Use only drive-through pharmacies in December
2. Don't ask for a spoon
3. Don't piss off the kings
